It’s been a few weeks of inactivity on the hockey blog because things just got dormant with the Labor Day weekend, and then an extra week off because the rink had events that postponed the start of the playoffs.
This week, however, I went back to Chelsea Piers Bluestreak to begin another cycle of training. This time out I’ll go twice a week, rather than three times. I was a little daunted going back because in the 10 weeks I took off, I was not working out to the level that I had been prior to starting the first cycle.
It turned out that I must have been doing enough though. Yes, it did wear me out, as I would expect a two-hour workout. But my body wasn’t shattered like it was in the first week of the second cycle.
I like the new two-day rotation too. Monday we did treadmill, ploymetrics and skills. I was happy that after the first go at the treadmill that I basically remembered how to do it. And, making the treadmill more fun right now is that Kevin, the guy running the mill, has the 80s channel on. For the second go on the mill that first night, “Magic” from Xanadu came on and that was just too perfect. I loved getting back to the plyometrics, and I did pretty good with it too. Doing it on one leg, especially my left, is not-so-good, but I liked hopping anyway. Skills was the place I was super excited to get back too to see how my wrist shot was holding up in the controlled atmosphere, and it came back pretty quick. Scott ran us through some various drills and we ended with a skills competition. For this, the scoring was how many time you could hit the posts, I only hit once, but at least I wasn’t shut out.
Wednesday’s session was a bit harder. It started with the pre-test for this cycle. This is where it became clearer that I had not regressed too much in the time off because in most cases my results were the same, or at least extremely close to, the post-test. There were a couple new testing items for the hockey players: the first was to skate as long as you could on the mill with it on a 10 degree grade and going at a 7.5 speed (at least I think it was 7.5). I lasted 16.8 seconds, just .2 seconds behind Robb, so I was happy with that. The second new item was, with the mill off and flat, spin it yourself as often as you could in 30 seconds. I spun it 13 times, slightly off my cycle 1 best but this was also at the end of a much more strenuous mill session. It was also the best of anyone in my group at the time, so I was happy… but exhausted. It took all through skills to get my heart rate back down to something more reasonable.
So it was a great first week back, nine more to go!
In Ordinals news, we play BNP tonight in the first round of the spring season playoffs. And for fall the roster is pretty much done. We need one more alternate player, but all the full time players are in place and that makes me a very happy captain. For D8, I’m hoping to get on one of the NYCGHA teams because I want to play twice on Saturday nights whenever possible. Oh, and the sure sign fall is back, Ronnie’s is at 5 am now!!! This morning’s session was awesome with a 5-on-5 scrimmage with only two subs on the bench. Love that!
